Escapism

You don’t know how long you’ve been here, but you know that it’s been a long time. The
days all blur together. You stopped counting after fifty, and that was fifty days ago.

When you first came here, you heard them say that they put you in this place to help you.

You don’t believe them.

The visitors come and go, but they never take you with them. They laugh and point, and
then they leave, and you never see them again. Or maybe you do. You don’t remember all the
Faces.

The visitors throw rocks at you down in your enclosure. They pelt you with rocks, so
many rocks. They leave after a while, but the pain doesn’t.

You’re constantly cold. You’re constantly warm. It’s uncomfortable, and you can’t ever
get used to it no matter how hard you try.

There are rocks for you to sit on and trees for you to lean on, but they’re plastic. They put
those in for you shortly after you got here. You miss real trees.

The enclosure is small, but not small enough for you to not pace around. You do that a
lot. You can’t run, but you can pace, and you can sit, and you can bite the bars, and you can rock
back and forth.

Actually, scratch that, you can run. Somedays, you run right into the walls. The pain
blocks out the thoughts and the loneliness.

You’re currently alone right now, but you’ve been with someone else. They needed you
to breed. The visitors always enjoy the babies. You don’t know where your baby is now, but you
hope that it’s okay, even though you know it’s not.

You’ve seen others being escorted out by them. You never see them again. You wish
they’d take you out of here too.

Instantly, you stop thinking that. You don’t need to be taken out of here by them. You’re
going to make your escape. You’re going to be free.

You wait until night. There’s not that many of them walking about at night.

You try to scale up the walls, but you can’t. Your limbs were not meant for climbing a
giant concrete wall, but don’t give up. You keep going until your fingers are bloody and your
muscles ache, but you make it.